NYPD Blocks “Blow the Whistle on Stop-and-Frisk” Contingent from West Indian Day Parade

Monday (September 3), the Stop Mass Incarceration Network distributed thousands of bright orange and yellow whistles to parade viewers and marchers heralding a new and more widespread wave of public protest of the NYPD policy of stop-and-frisk beginning Thursday, September 13.

Their message, “No one will be stopped-and-frisked in silence,” was cheered. Thousands of photos were snapped of their banner “Blow the Whistle on Stop-and-Frisk Thursday Sept. 13.”

But one group did not like the contingent’s message, and blocked them from entering the parade, then encircling them with hundreds of armed officers. The NYPD, despite the group’s authorization from the West Indian Day Parade Association to participate in the parade, refused the contingent admittance at several times and places along the route. At one point, after they were directed to their place in the march, police pushed the contingent out of the march and onto a side street.

Carl Dix, an initiator of the campaign along with Cornel West, said, "The NYPD set out to keep our message--Blow the Whistle on Stop-and-Frisk--from getting out on Labor Day. A ‘white shirt’ cop told us that he wrote the permits for who gets to march on Eastern Parkway in the West Indian Day Parade. This is what a police state sounds like."

The Stop Mass Incarceration Network says, “If it sickens you to know that under Stop-and-Frisk, almost 2000 people, most of them Black or Latino are subjected to harassment, disrespect, brutality and even worse; if you are tired of seeing Muslims and South Asians targeted; if you hate the way immigrants and LGBT people are treated as less than human by NYPD; if you are someone who knows this will never happen to you but also know it's wrong; Join in BLOWING the WHISTLE on STOP-and-FRISK Thursday September 13. On September 13, nobody gets Stopped-and-Frisked in silence!”

The Network has announced gathering points where youth are regularly stopped and frisked in 5 boroughs on September 13, and also plans to symbolically “blow the whistle” on 1 Police Plaza at 4:00 pm that day.